Audio Or Video, Short Or Long: Choose The Format That Serves Your Mission with Scott Maderer

The spark for a lasting show can be as simple as admitting “I hate writing” and picking up a mic. Carl sits down with Scott Maderer of Inspired Stewardship to unpack how a clear format, thoughtful promotion, and a service-first mindset turned a modest launch into a platform that fuels his business and book. We explore why choosing a medium that fits your strengths matters, how to build a repeatable production system, and what it really takes to grow an audience without chasing vanity metrics.

Scott shares the messy truth behind his 2018 start: a delayed first release, tiny download counts, and lots of DIY learning. What changed the game wasn’t a growth hack—it was treating every number as a person, showing up consistently, and going where podcast listeners already are. We dig into practical audience building strategies like guesting on aligned shows, writing narrative social posts that earn attention, and using email as a reliable engine. Along the way, Scott reveals why he remains audio-only, how listener habits guide that choice, and what he’d do differently if launching today, including starting with video to tap natural reach.

We also get tactical about content design. Audio and video require different moves—describe visuals, tighten intros, and protect pacing so listeners aren’t left behind. For episode length, the rule is value over minutes: beginners win with focused 10–20 minute shows, while seasoned hosts can lean into longer, deeper conversations that match their audience’s appetite. Scott breaks down interview craft that converts—listening for the next question, pulling on moments of tension, and anchoring each episode around at least one clear point. His book journey ties it together: episodes became chapters, and relationships formed through the podcast opened doors to editors, publishers, and partners.

Connect with Scott:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csmaderer/
Website:
https://inspiredstewardship.com/ccc/
https://inspiredstewardship.com/

Transcript

Scott’s Origin And Mission

Carl 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. It's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. It's hard to believe that podcasting has been around for over 20 years. And I'll tell you, there are days that I feel like I'm still getting started because there's been such an evolution. When I chat with people about what their journey has been, it's a relief to see that so many other people are also in that same place where if they've been around the podcasting space for a while, they're seeing a huge evolution from where they were five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago if they've been in the podcasting space that long. Today's guest has been in the podcasting space for quite some time, since 2018, actually. But Scott Maderer, in 2017, he and his wife started Inspired Stewardship as a business to serve Christian men and couples who are struggling to live out their calling. They work to help align the way you use your time, your talent, and your treasures so that you can identify and live a fully authentic life that allows you to authentically live your calling, serve others, and provide for your family as well. He's a sought-after podcast guest, a sought-after podcast host. He's a recently published author with the book Inspired Living: Assemble the Puzzle of Your Call by Mastering Your Time, Your Talent, and Your Treasures. And we're going to talk about Scott's journey into the podcasting space, how it's been for him, and what the future holds for where he's taking his podcasting journey into the future. Scott, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much. I'm glad to be here. I am so thrilled you're here. And speaking to somebody who has a little bit more journey into podcasting than I do by a just a smidgen, I entered the playing field, shall we say, in 2019, but you were just ahead of me by six to twelve months or something like that. Was it that led you to podcasting of all the platforms you could have picked to get the word out about what it is that you're doing? Why podcasting?

Scott 2:33

I'll give you the really short answer and then I'll kind of expand on it. The short answer is I hate writing. So, you know, the longer answer to that is I truly am one of those folks that if you gave me a microphone, I don't mind. I would be in front of a group of people, hand me a microphone, I'll talk. I don't care. I've never really had that fear of public speaking that people talk about. I mean, I do, it's there. I know what people are talking about, I feel it, but it's just something that it's never really stopped me from sharing. I've done a lot of public speaking. I actually had my paid speak first paid speaking of it when I was 12 years old. I got paid 50 bucks to, you know, give my testimony somewhere. And it's like, yeah, cool, this is awesome. You know, I can get paid to do this. And basically throughout my whole life, you know, I was a school teacher for 16 years. I was in the corporate world doing sales and operations and you know, talking to clients in front of school boards. And I've done education with adults where I've been teaching groups of 100, 200, 500, 1000, you know, that kind of thing. And so it seemed natural rather than try to do something like a blog or something like you know, sit down and write all this stuff, which was really hard for me and foreign to me. Let me just get a microphone and plug it into a computer and start talking into it and let's see where that goes. And so that's kind of the gestation of the thoughts behind podcasting as opposed to all the other things that you can do.

Why Podcasting Over Writing

Carl 3:52

I love it. And it's it's so much quicker to get it done too. Uh, same reason I got into radio because not that I hate to write, it's just it took me longer to write than it was to actually speak the words, right? It's funny because here we are in this you know tech-driven world now. I use dictation all the time on my phone instead of sending text messages. I will check it though, just to make sure that my Siri, shall we say, will give her actual name. He understands exactly the words everyone's iPhones just went, yes. That's true. That's I never thought of that. Good one, good catch. But just to make sure that Orhe gets non-gender, but hears me correctly because sometimes not all words are interpreted equally, shall we say? So I've sent some very interesting messages to people without checking, and I go, hmm, should have maybe checked that first. Luckily, none of them have been in business, it's all been with friends or family, and they get it, and this usually they laugh. Because I don't think you went to the grocery store to buy lava cakes or lava mud or one thing. I'm like, what? Well, that's what it said. I'm like, I don't even know what that means. So, anyhow, you've done some work with John Maxwell too. Great company, great organization, leadership skills, all kinds of things that you learned from an organization like that. And I'm sure that's helped with your speaking as well.

Scott 5:08

Absolutely. Again, that's another one of those opportunities that I've had to learn more about speaking, about coaching. They actually, within the team, they have lanes on coaching, they have lanes on speaking, they have lanes on different parts of doing the business of leadership development. And I actually started that before I went into business for myself this time when I was still in the corporate world. That was something that I did really to get better at leadership within my corporate job. Interesting things is that it turns out that things like learning how to communicate better, learning how to coach better, learning how to lead better works whether you're in business for yourself, it works whether you're in the corporate world, it works whether you're an employee, whether you're in a leadership position, church, family, school, because those skills that you learn are applicable regardless of place. And so a lot of the work that I've done with them definitely has been something that's helped me continue to kind of refine that leadership and that speaking and that communication tool.

Carl 6:08

Fantastic. As I said, it's a great, great organization. I know it's come across my email several times to check that out. And again, phenomenal things that you learn in organizations like that. Let's get back to podcasting and talk about that journey. 2018, you're launching your show, and it was smooth, right? No issues, everything was perfect.

Lessons From Maxwell Leadership

Scott 6:28

Yeah, no, everything, nothing ever went goes wrong, right? No, I mean, I so I launched my first episode January 8th of 2018, and right there is already the first thing. I was actually scheduled to launch January 1st. Notice I said it went live January 8th. Already there was the thing of, oh, wait a minute, I thought I scheduled it. Why didn't it go live? Oh, let me go fix that, and you know, those sorts of things. I was smart enough that I launched with more than one episode recorded. You know, both I had three that went out kind of that first day. And then I had, I think I had five in the can. It might have been four. It was four or five in the can that that I'd already recorded. And at that time, I was actually doing a combination of interview and solo episodes. So on Monday, I would have an interview that would come out. It was actually a part of an interview. What I was doing at that time is I was recording a long-form interview, so two hours or more. And then I was cutting it up into four parts. So I kind of had a part one, part two, part three, part four across four Mondays. And then on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, I had a short solo episode that I did. So when I say I had four or five in the can, it was really the interview was in the can. I'd edited the first part, I'd recorded the four solo episodes. I think that was it, you know. So, and basically that's kind of what went live that first week. And immediately, you know, you feel like, oh my, I'm behind. I've got to start editing, I've got to start schedule. I was doing it all myself. I didn't really have anyone to help me. I hadn't really gotten a lot of training. So it was a lot of YouTube videos and watching a lot of the resources that folks have now available to them, like what you do and others do on teaching and training and all of that, wasn't really out there that much yet in 2018. So it was a lot of just let me figure it out as I go. And hopefully, this is gonna work. Ended up being interesting, is I really enjoyed it. I got good feedback. I had, you know, the first episode, of course, I had you know, me, my mom, you know, my cat, you know, that's all who listened, right? That kind of thing. But my cat's mom, if I was lucky, you know, sometimes she tuned me out. It's that kind of like everybody, you know, there's five, 10 downloads or whatever it was. But pretty quickly, I started enjoying it. I started sharing about it, I started talking to people about it. I started going on other people's shows and kind of connecting back to what I was doing. And so it started to grow. One of the things that happens is when you start to see more downloads. I think a lot of people look at those numbers and kind of go, oh, you know, great, I've got 15 this week instead of 50. For me, it was like, wait a minute, I've got 15 downloads. That's 15 people. Wow, how cool is that? Yeah, I don't talk to 15 people in a week. You know, this is awesome. You know, that it was that feeling of, wait a minute, I'm real this week I reached 50 people. And I was able to look at those numbers. And now I'll be honest, I don't look at the numbers nearly as much as I did when I started out. I kind of got away from that, but they were able to translate to me into real people listening, and that kept me going and kept me realizing hey, even if they're not emailing me or calling me or reaching out to me, I'm making an impact. And it was actually the end of the second month that I had somebody reach out and say, Hey, I've been listening to your show and I'd like to talk to you about maybe working together. And so, which was one of the reasons I was doing the show is marketing for my business. So it was like immediate proof of wow, this could work. And so that happened early enough. I think that's part of it too, that kept going is that happened pretty early for me.

Launch Hiccups And Early Systems

Carl 10:06

It's funny that you mentioned that because there are a lot of individuals, I think, when they first come to the podcasting space, the first thing they say is, okay, I got my podcast, I'm putting it out there, show me the audience. I've built it. Where are you, people? Come on, you should be here listening to my show, not realizing that firstly, it's a journey and everyone's journey is different. If you're somebody like Tony Robbins or Oprah Winfrey or Joe Rogan, any of those individuals, they've already made the journey for themselves with other things they've done. So, of course, they launch a podcast, they'll get 10,000 downloads in their sleep, let alone when people are awake, right? That's that's just the nature of the game. But if you are somebody like Scott Maderer brand new, those 10 episodes, or those uh not 10 episodes, rather, those 10 downloads, 15, 30, whatever it is, those are worth celebrating. And that's just the beginning. And you'll get better as you go along. Number one. So if you mess up a

Scott 11:00

please don't go listen to the first 10 episodes, please don't.

Carl 11:03

He has a back catalog, folks. Go and check them out. But seriously, it's this, and we talked about this just before we went on today, is about the you know, how many episodes actually make it past number 10? And it's not many. It's yeah, people will launch those four, five, six, eight episodes and go, shoot, this is work. And you have to love it, you have to appreciate that it is a long game, not a short game. You have to allow yourself the opportunity to yourself to grow as you grow the show, and you have to understand that this is like any other industry, it's constantly evolving. So if you take, for example, what was commonplace back in 2018 when you launched, but without considering what's going on now in the podcasting space, be it AI tools to make the job easier, be it video, I know you still have an audio-only podcast. I want to talk about that in just a minute. But whatever it is, there's an evolution to the industry. Even microphones have evolved since 2018. So all of those changes, you have to stick with it. And if you don't, then you'll just get well, you'll get left behind anyways, but you'll give up and say, that didn't work. I attune it to, it's like eating five salads and saying, Why haven't I lost why haven't I shed 15 pounds? Right? Same kind of thing. It's a long game.

Scott 12:29

Well, and a lot of it too, I think, is people don't go into it with any thought of. I mean, this is true of business in general, whether it's a podcasting, and I'm gonna refer to podcasting as a business. Yes, you can do it as a hobby, yes, you can do it for other things, but it's it's still to me, it's it's kind of got that same sort of mindset of you got to treat it kind of like a business. And all of the time when you go into it, a lot of times that if I build it, they will come mentality is really common without stopping to think about wait a minute, how you know what is my plan to actually get people to learn about this? You know, I'm not gonna just hang up a shingle on my office door and expect 10,000 customers to show up. Nobody would do that. You know, somebody opens a brick and mortar store, they advertise, they talk about it, they do things to let people know they exist. We kind of have to do the same thing in a podcasting world where, and so, like I said, one of my techniques was go on other people's shows. Why? Because if I'm going on someone that has a podcast, the people that are listening actually know what a podcast is. You know, I don't have to explain to them what a podcast is. I can just mention, hey, I've got a show too. And all of a sudden they may come over and listen. And being a little strategic and thinking about, well, what kind of people am I trying to attract to my show? What's their mindset? What are they after? What are they thinking about? And then going and doing now back then, it was really hard. You actually had to go look at iTunes and do a lot of research to figure out there's a podcast that might have a listenership kind of like the people that I'm trying to attract. Let me see, let me go find an email and reach out to that person or find a website and all of that. Now, again, like you said, the industry's evolved. There's a lot of tools and a lot of services out there that make that a lot easier to do the research and to do the reach out and to make the connection. Today, getting guests is probably a thousand times easier than it was when I launched, and being on other people's shows is easily a thousand times easier than it was when I launched. So having that ability to do that and making that easier, I think that's a lot of the learning. But back at the beginning, it's going into it with a plan for what are you actually going to do? And that means committing some time, committing some energy, committing some resources. It's not necessarily a huge amount of money, but at the very least, it's going to be time and energy in some sort of way for either you or somebody else to be going out there and you know promoting, sharing. It's not enough anymore to just throw it up on Facebook and go, hey, I've got a show. You know, here's my new episode. Check it out. You know, you've got to do more than that to be able to get folks interested in coming over.

Celebrating Small Numbers

Carl 15:10

I have a colleague actually, speaking of which, who is really good at this and he plays the Facebook algorithm game quite well. When he's writing posts just in general, let alone about letting people know about your new episode. He's writing his episode or he's writing his Facebook post and he's telling a story. It might be a story that's personal, it might be something that relates to a movie or a television show. Something that lays the groundwork, tells the story. That's another evolution is the evolution with how you promote your show. Email is still top drawer, I think, for a lot of people, promoting it through your list, especially if it's for business. Social media, there's been an evolution there. So understanding that, yes, you can promote your show on various social media platforms, which is the main one, though, where people are going to get the most where you'll get the most traction, number one, but where people are most likely to live, work, and play, be it Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is. Uh, what are they? And understanding that you can't just write that post that says, check out my new episode. I'm talking with Scott Mater, great guy. Have a listen. It don't cut it anymore. Because actually, and people don't care. People go, Oh, there's another one promoting somebody else promoting their podcast episode. So that's one thing. I did want to mention though, that you still, after you're entering like seven years into podcasting, you still have an audio-on show, which I think is phenomenal because full disclosure, at the recording of this, I still have an audio-only show. A lot of individuals have said, hey Carl, you should be doing video for no other reason because video, right? What's made you stick with just the audio format?

Audience Building As A Strategy

Scott 16:55

You know, a lot of it is just I I've got a system, I've got a process, it works for me from a time perspective, from an energy perspective. It's not something that I have to. I'm not gonna say it's easy and automatic and there's not any work involved, because there is, but it's not hard because I know how to do it and it works, and I'm getting what the results that I want. I have thought about eventually I may start either a second show or you know, sunset this show and start a new one, especially with the book and and other things and kind of rebrand under a new umbrella, so to speak. And if I do that, I probably will start as video because so much now it's easier to promote video, video sort of highlighted. Uh, there's some natural reach that comes with video that currently is not happening with audio. So I would probably start if I was starting today, I would start with video. But because I've been doing it so long, because I've got traction, you know, I've got loyal listeners, I've got folks that listen, and I've surveyed them and reached out to them and said, hey, you know, do you want me to, would you like to see video? Obviously, you don't get as you get 5,000 downloads on episodes, you do not get 5,000 people answering a survey, but you get a small little segment of them. But those folks that have given me feedback have been like, you know, I tend to listen to you when I'm on the go. I really don't want the video. It's not that big of a deal to me. So for the current show, it's somewhat inertia, easier. And I'm getting the results I want. I think that's an important part. I haven't really seen a drop-off in listeners. I haven't seen, in fact, it's continued to grow. I haven't seen, you know, less folks reaching out for business. I haven't seen less reach. I haven't seen less impact. So there's no real drive to change. But again, if I started over today, you know, I just start with the other because you'd be starting from zero. And so it'd be an easier place to start from.

Carl 18:50

I think that's a good example. Is you have been doing this for a while, you're getting the results you want. I think that's the key right there. Is and I attune this to professional speaking. If it is your you know, Modus Operandi to speak on big stages that give you, you know, 150, 200 people or more on a conference circuit, and that's what you need to build your business, perfect, go and do it. But if you are the type of business owner who is okay with speaking to 15, 20, 30 people, because those are fairly entry-level results, even for audio on audio-only podcast now, and that's all you need, and that's going to get you one or two really key clients in a year, then again, then it's serving its purpose. That's the way I look at it. But there is this called evil, but there is this thing called Meta and this thing called Google, who've decided that audio is where it's at. They give a lot more love towards those platforms, so or video rather, video. You knew what I meant. But but yeah, they they give more love to that. And that's not to say that audio isn't important. As a matter of fact, audio, without audio, there is no video. So you still need to make sure that the audio piece is in some cases even better. Make sure that because you can correct bad video. Bad audio is is still, even with all the tools out there, it's still not the easiest thing to correct if you haven't put the best, put the audio through a really good product to begin with.

Scott 20:17

Well, and there's actually a lot of studies that I've seen that show that like YouTube, which is a video only kind of channel, that there's a significant number of people, myself included, that will often have YouTube playing, have something on, have my earbuds in, have my phone in my pocket. I am not watching that video. I'm listening to the video. You know, I'm treating it as if it's audio only, even though there's a video component. The other thing I would say, because I've seen a lot of folks that they take an audio podcast and then they slap video on top of it and start releasing the video too for that reach. I would argue that there is a difference in how you position audio content versus video content in terms of the language you use, the way you describe things, the way you talk about things. It irritates the heck out of me when I'm listening to a podcast that's an audio only podcast on iTunes, and they say, look at this picture. And I'm like, kind of can't. You know, what picture are you talking about? And I'll just, you know, I'll stop listening. It's like, okay, you lost me. So if you are going to produce video content and say things like listen to this picture, don't make that mistake of strip the video out and throw it up on iTunes and say, There's my audio podcast too. You actually have to think about the fact that they are different modalities. Even if somebody is not watching the video, if I said, hey, look at this picture and it was important, I would pull my phone out, back the video up a few seconds, and look at the picture that they said, you know? And I'm oh, okay, that's the picture they're talking about, and then put the phone back in my pocket and go on about my day. But it's the difference, and I've seen a lot of folks making that mistake. I do, I feel like that. a mistake because it turns people off.

Smarter Promotion On Social

Carl 22:02

I'll say I know why this is a mistake, uh, or why or how this mistake is being made, rather. It's a difference between radio and television, right? Radio is theater of the mind. Think back to those old radio shows of the 1930s and 1940s. Every single but every single thing, every single thing is that Bob reached for the doorknob. He turned the handle. Click. It creaked open like every single piece painted the picture in your mind. And if you just say Bob opened the door okay you kind of can have a picture of Bob opening the door but if you don't paint enough of the picture or give enough of the auditory messaging to your example, take a look at this picture. It's lost. Right? So you have to think of the of the if you're watching you can see the picture but if you're listening to the podcast let me describe what's in the picture it's three circles and in those three circles there's a little dot and the little dots represent a graphic or something.

Scott 23:02

And now if they do that what you just said now all of a sudden it's like okay I'll keep listening because they acknowledge the fact that I may not be looking at the picture.

Carl 23:10

And a video audience will appreciate that they won't care that you actually took that two or three seconds to explain it.

Scott 23:16

Well again some of them have their phone in their pockets so they're actually like hey cool I don't have to pull my phone out.

Carl 23:22

That's true. But a video audience like an audience where people are literally sitting there watching the video and they won't care. But the people who are listening to the audio even if it's on the video channel you're right they'll still appreciate the fact that you just painted that picture for them. Really good example. You're launching your podcast in 2024 all over again you're starting from scratch aside this is hypothetical by the way I'm not telling you you have to do this. Aside from you're like wait a minute I've already been on this journey Carl I'm launching again don't make me try and get past episode eight again that'd be easier now. That's true. You have a little bit of experience you're starting from scratch again we already know that you would probably start a brand new podcast uh when you start a brand new show it probably would be video let me ask you this though what else would you do differently knowing what you know now I also think I'd probably lean in a little bit more to longer form content.

Scott 24:24

I tend to do and I and I still do most of my episodes are 20 minutes to 40 minute kind of link. And there's actually reason for that and I don't think there's a bad thing about that. I don't think it's a a negative per se but I think I would lean more into fewer episodes but longer episodes where I still do now twice a week is currently my release schedule. At one time I was doing six times a week but they're all short and I think there's some value now and I think folks there's so much short form content out there the TikToks the Instagram stories the Facebook whatever the reels and there's a place for that but I also think that there especially for a business based podcast or things where we're trying to dive deeper into some of the story behind the story the going deeper than just the surface level there's some value into leaning into and going longer rather than shorter. And again I think some of that is an evolution over time and I think some of that is thinking about the audience that I would want to attract is that audience that's going to stick and listen to a two hour thing, you know, or an hour and a half thing. I I that's more the the psychology of the person that actually tends to do business with me tends to be somebody that is attracted to what I talk about and what I teach, how I work. And so I didn't know that early on which is why I kind of kept it the short form. Again this is another kind of like well why haven't you added NVIDIA well because this is kind of the promise I made whenever I was doing it and I don't really want to change it in this show.

Staying Audio Only And Why

Carl 26:05

But if I was launching all over again I think that's another thing that I'd probably lean into you're coming from a place of experience I will say that I would caution against a brand new person trying to do an hour long podcast I agree 110% when all they have is six minutes worth of content and they try and stretch it to an hour because that is when people tune out and that's when people get discouraged and say I've been doing this podcast for eight episodes and I have three listeners because quite often what happens too is when people come to us for training or even prospects they say how long should a podcast episode be and I say as long as it needs to be no longer which means if it needs to be 17 minutes make it 17 minutes. If you have enough content to make it longer or you have enough I'll go with your example there you have enough experience or your audience would be okay with you doing an hour or an hour and a half long content a podcast episode rather and you don't lose them and that's a lot of it as I think I know my audience better now than I did when I started I've learned that over time that's part of it.

Scott 27:12

I've gotten better at interviewing at asking good questions at drawing things out of folks I've gotten better even with just solo content finding that thing that oh wow at first glance it's like oh this is I could talk on that for like six minutes and now it's more like I could do 40 episodes on that you know it's like you know I could talk forever on that topic. So it's you know training your brain we talked earlier about training your brain to constantly be looking for content for snippets for things that you can turn into show content or or reach out to guests about or that sort of thing. Some of that is just learning to do that over time. And again that puts me in a different place today than I would have been back when I really, really first started. The other piece I would say is kind of to your point of it should be long enough. I would also say because I've been asked you know how many points should you make in a podcast there's kind of that old you know do you have three points or do you have seven points how many bullet points do you have and my answer to that one is at least one because there's also the episode like and this is where the long form like you said could be a problem where it's like okay we've meandered all over the place and you haven't made a point yet let's go you know that always bothers me too with you know intros that are like it's a 42 minute episode and about minute 20 they've gotten through with the intro and it's like okay guys come on you know we can get there a little quicker than that.

Carl 28:38

Yeah no I totally agree with that. And to your point, yes, you should make at least one point. And I think the number of points will again it that goes back to the audience. And I always like to when I'm training people how to do it I'll break it down because when I'm training people they're coming from a place of zero right they're coming from a place of I don't have a show what do I need to know to get launched and I'll give them some structure. I'll say if you can come up with two or three points and I attune it to being almost like a Toastmaster speech where it can be can you come up with five to seven minutes or even 10 minutes of content because if you can that's a great length for a brand new person starting a podcast it's not too cumbersome you don't have to try and reinvent the wheel to try and come up with more content you just if you can do that from a starting point great so three points or two points and that's exactly that's a good point. That serves you but as you evolve as you have evolved because you're entering your seventh year now it's a different game for you and it's a different game as your show has evolved for your audience they might be able to take a full blown hour and a half or two hour even seminar that is technically an episode but it's more of a seminar style show now and there are shows like that there are episodes episodes like that there are shows like that those are okay I wouldn't recommend starting like that but there are if you're starting from zero I would not start from there.

Designing For Audio Vs Video

Scott 29:58

And I would also I would say honestly in my opinion when you're starting out I think having some at least some part of your show where you're doing some sort of interview based talking to other people is valuable just because it's not all on you you know to come up with the conversation and to drive the conversation it's more of a hey let's jump on a call and talk. And now again with that there's good interviews and there's bad interviews and you're going to get better at it over time. I know I'm considerably better at it today and I still will not consider myself the best interviewer on the planet by any stretch of the imagination but I'm better because you learn to listen and to listen for oh they just said oh that's the next question I want to ask let me ask that question. And so you're listening so often we listen to hear the other person so that we can respond when you're interviewing and honestly I think when you're coaching and I'm a coach as a profession so I do this as a coach too you have to train yourself to listen with the thought of what's the next question I need to ask as opposed what do I want to respond? What do I want to say in response it's what's the next question that I need to ask that gets easier over time you know and it's not something that's easy to do when you first start out when you first start out that it's very tricky.

Carl 31:21

We don't have the best examples we have are again radio and television but most of us coming to this platform we don't have experience. I do I come from a place of experience with 25 years in broadcasting I know how to get information out of people. I just know how to do that it comes naturally well it didn't come naturally it came with years of doing it and doing it over and over and over again to be able to do that and also to fill for time you know you have to do that sometimes in the media world. So I know how to do that and fill the gaps where necessary and also it made it more of a comfort zone for me launching my show to launch with solo episodes. As you said though that's not the case for everybody. They might need that maybe your first episode is setting the table of here's what the podcast is going to be about, here's my backstory here's what you can expect that kind of thing. And then maybe you're having some conversations but recognize that it's whatever works for you. But I like definitely the fact that having it conversational it also allows you like you say to strengthen that interviewing muscle which you'll suck at first but the more you do it the better you'll get at it. So wow oh my goodness Scott amazing conversation I could talk to you forever. That's a very long time though. So maybe when I rebrand my podcast and I'm doing forever length episodes I'll have you back for sure. But share with our listeners what you want to pass on to them today because I know you have uh a gift or something you'd like to offer them.

Scott 32:42

Absolutely so actually I put together a special page just for your listeners where they can get some free resources find out more about my podcast if you're interested checking that out my book information is over there all of that. So if you'll go to inspired stewardship.com and then just forward slash CCC. So just the three C's the initials of your show Carl then they'll be able to find that download those resources if they're interested in them on the time the talent and the treasures areas that I work find out more about my podcast my book and all of that phenomenal oh my goodness thank you so much Scott we'll make sure by the way that the link that Scott mentioned is in the show notes as well as his other social links and the website so you can connect with Scott he's a phenomenal resource.

Carl 33:28

It's an amazing conversation I've had with you today Scott so I certainly do hope that people take you up on that offer and grab those resources from you. Before I turn you loose though to likely go record another episode actually I do have to record an episode this afternoon. I got uh five minutes before you have to hit the microphone I'll leave you with the final thought.

Scott 33:48

You know for me I think I want to do it in the theme of the podcast what we've been talking about but one thing I'll share so you know we mentioned the book a couple of times and where the book came from everything that's in that book came from the podcast. I want to share with folks that one of the reasons that I love podcasting and love people that getting into it is again you make connections most people that are podcasting are very friendly very helpful very kind people I've run into very few jerks run into a few but not very many and they'll actually help you. So you know with my book I spoke the content it's all from the podcast. The person that helped me get in touch with the publisher met through the podcast. I interviewed people for the book all people who I'd met through the podcast my editor somebody I knew through the podcast. So it's all of these connections that you make add so much more value. So to extrapolate that what the takeaway for me that final thought is don't hesitate. Even if you're an introvert like me and don't necessarily really like making connections, value that power of connection that we have and lean into it. And you'd be surprised at how quickly and how often that can help you really get where you want if you're going into those relationships with the attitude of how can I help you? How can I work with you? What can I do to make your life better? Inevitably your life is blessed by that as well.

Carl 35:15

Wow such a powerful message and a great way to end it Scott Maderer thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you. And hey thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team our audio engineer Dom Carillo our sonic writing genius Kenton Dobrowolski and the person who works the arms all of our arms actually our project manager and my trusty assistant Julovell Tiongco known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today let us know if you can leave us a comment or review or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it we hope you'll share with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today well please feel free to share with your enemies. And if you don't someone who would make a great guest on the show let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there including the links to our website, LinkedIn and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcast or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because after all we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple catch again next time